Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Time, Volume 1

by François Guizot

Such was their position at the opening of the session of 1816: a little obscure still, but recognized by the Cabinet as well as by the different parties. The Duke de Richelieu, M. Lainé, and M. Decazes, whether they liked the doctrinarians or not, felt that they positively required their co-operation, as well in the debates of the Chambers as to act upon public opinion. The left-hand party, powerless in itself, accorded with them from necessity, although their ideas and language sometimes produced surprise rather than sympathy. The right, notwithstanding its losses at the elections, was still very strong, and speedily assumed the offensive. The King's speech on opening the session was mild and somewhat indistinct, as if tending rather to palliate the decree of the 5th of September, than to parade it with an air of triumph: "Rely," said he, in conclusion, "on my fixed determination to repress the outrages of the ill-disposed, and to restrain the exuberance of overheated zeal." "Is that all?" observed M. de Châteaubriand, on leaving the royal presence; "if so, the victory is ours:" and on that same day he dined with the Chancellor. M. de la Bourdonnaye was even more explicit. "The King," said he, with a coarse expression, "once more hands his ministers over to us!" During the session of the next day, meeting M. Royer-Collard, with whom he was in the habit of extremely free conversation, "Well," said he, "there you are, more rogues than last year." "And you not so many," replied M. Royer-Collard. The right-hand party, in their reviving hopes, well knew how to distinguish the adversaries with whom they would have to contend.

As in the preceding session, the first debates arose on questions of expediency. The Cabinet judged it necessary to demand from the Chambers the prolongation, for another year, of the two provisional laws respecting personal liberty and the daily press. M. Decazes presented a detailed account of the manner in which, up to that period, the Government had used the arbitrary power committed to its hands, and also the new propositions which should restrain it within the limits necessary to remove all apprehended danger. The right-hand party vigorously rejected these propositions, upon the very natural ground that they had no confidence in the Ministers, but without any other reasoning than the usual commonplace arguments of liberalism. The doctrinarians supported the bills, but with the addition of commentaries which strongly marked their independence, and the direction they wished to give to the power they defended. "Every day," said M. de Serre, "the nature of our constitution will be better understood, its benefits more appreciated by the nation; the laws with which you co-operate, will place by degrees our institutions and habits in harmony with representative monarchy; the government will approach its natural perfection,—that unity of principle, design, and action which forms the condition of its existence. In permitting and even in protecting legal opposition, it will not allow that opposition to find resting-points within itself. It is because it can be, and ought to be, watched over and contradicted by independent men, that it should be punctually obeyed, faithfully seconded and served by those who have become and wish to remain its direct agents. Government will thus acquire a degree of strength which can dispense with the employment of extraordinary means: legal measures, restored to their proper energy, will be found sufficient." "There is," said M. Royer-Collard, "a strong objection against this bill; the Government may be asked, 'Before you demand excessive powers, have you employed all those which the laws entrust to you? have you exhausted their efficacy?' ... I shall not directly answer this question, but I shall say to those who put it, 'Take care how you expose your Government to too severe a trial, and one under which nearly all Governments have broken down; do not require from it perfection; consider its difficulties as well as its duties.' ... We wish to arrest its steps in the course it pursues at present, and to impose daily changes. We demand from it the complete development of institutions and constitutional enactments; above all, we require that vigorous unity of principles, system, and conduct without which it will never effectually reach the end towards which it advances. But what it has already done, is a pledge for what it will yet accomplish. We feel a just reliance that the extraordinary powers with which we invest it will be exercised, not by or for a party, but for the nation against all parties. Such is our treaty; such are the stipulations which have been spoken of: they are as public as our confidence, and we thank those who have occasioned their repetition, for proving to France that we are faithful to her cause, and neglect neither her interests nor our own duties."

With a more gentle effusion of mind and heart, M. Camille Jordan held the same language; the bills passed; the right-hand party felt as blows directed against itself the advice suggested to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet saw that in that quarter, as necessary supporters, they had also haughty and exacting allies.

Their demands were not fruitless. The Cabinet, uninfluenced either by despotic views or immoderate passions, had no desire to retain unnecessarily the absolute power with which it had been entrusted. No effort was requisite to deprive it of the provisional laws; they fell successively of themselves,—the suspension of the securities for personal liberty in 1817, the prevôtal courts in 1818, the censorship of the daily press in 1819; and four years after the tempest of the Hundred Days, the country was in the full enjoyment of all its constitutional privileges.

During this interval, other questions, more and less important, were brought forward and decided. When the first overflowing of the reaction of 1815 had a little calmed down, when France, less disturbed with the present, began once more to think of the future, she was called upon to enter on the greatest work that can fall to the lot of a nation. There was more than a new government to establish; it was necessary that a free government should be imbued with vigour. It was written, and it must live,—a promise often made, but never accomplished. How often, from 1789 to 1814, had liberties and political rights been inscribed on our institutes and laws, to be buried under them, and held of no account. The first amongst the Governments of our day, the Restoration, took these words at their true meaning; whatever may have been its traditions and propensities, what it said, it did; the liberties and rights it acknowledged, were taken into real co-operation and action. From 1814 to 1830, as from 1830 to 1848, the Charter was a truth. For once forgetting it, Charles X. fell.

When this work of organization, or, to speak more correctly, when this effectual call to political life commenced in 1816, the question of the electoral system, already touched upon, but without result, in the preceding session, was the first that came under notice. It was included in the scope of the fortieth article of the Charter, which ran thus:—"The electors who nominate the Deputies can have no right of voting, unless they pay a direct contribution of 300 francs, and have reached the age of thirty,"—an ambiguous arrangement, which attempted more than it ventured to accomplish. It evidently contained a desire of placing the right of political suffrage above the popular masses, and of confining it within the more elevated classes of society. But the constitutional legislator had neither gone openly to this point, nor attained it with certainty; for if the Charter required from the electors who were actually to name the Deputies, 300 francs of direct contribution, and thirty years of age, it did not forbid that these electors should be themselves chosen by preceding electoral assemblies; or rather it did not exclude indirect election, nor, under that form, what is understood by the term universal suffrage.

I took part in drawing up the bill of the 5th of February, 1817, which comprised, at that time, the solution given to this important question. I was present at the conferences in which it was prepared. When ready, M. Lainé, whose business it was, as Minister of the Interior, to present it to the Chamber of Deputies, wrote to say that he wished to see me: "I have adopted," he said, "all the principles of this bill, the concentration of the right of suffrage, direct election, the equal privilege of voters, their union in a single college for each department; and I really believe these are the best that could be desired: still, upon some of these points, I have mental doubts and little time to solve them. Help me in preparing the exposition of our objects." I responded, as I was bound, to this confiding sincerity, by which I felt equally touched and honoured. The bill was brought in; and while my friends supported it in the Chamber, from whence my age for the present excluded me, I defended it, on behalf of the Government, in several articles inserted in the 'Moniteur.' I was well informed as to its intent and true spirit, and I speak of it without embarrassment in presence of the universal suffrage, as now established. If the electoral system of 1817 disappeared in the tempest of 1848, it conferred on France thirty years of regular and free government, systematically sustained and controlled; and amidst all the varying influences of parties, and the shock of a revolution, this system sufficed to maintain peace, to develop national prosperity, and to preserve respect for all legal rights. In this age of ephemeral and futile experiments, it is the only political enactment which has enjoyed a long and powerful life. At least it was a work which may be acknowledged, and which deserves to be correctly estimated, even after its overthrow.

A ruling idea inspired the bill of the 5th of February, 1817,—to fix a term to the revolutionary system, and to give vigour to the constitutional Government. At that epoch, universal suffrage had ever been, in France, an instrument of destruction or deceit,—of destruction, when it had really placed political power in the hands of the multitude; of deceit, when it had assisted to annul political rights for the advantage of absolute power, by maintaining, through the vain intervention of the multitude, a false appearance of electoral privilege. To escape, in fine, from that routine of alternate violence and falsehood, to place political power in the region within which the conservative interests of social order naturally predominate with enlightened independence, and to secure to those interests, by the direct election of deputies from the country, a free and strong action upon its Government,—such were the objects, without reserve or exaggeration, of the authors of the electoral system of 1817.

In a country devoted for twenty-five years, on the subject of political elections, whether truly or apparently, to the principle of the supremacy of number, so absurdly called the sovereignty of the people, the attempt was new, and might appear rash. At first, it confined political power to the hands of 140,000 electors. From the public, and even from what was already designated the liberal party, it encountered but slight opposition; some objections springing from the past, some apprehensions for the future, but no declared or active hostility. It was from the bosom of the classes specially devoted to conservative interests, and from their intestine discussions, that the attack and the danger emanated.

During the session of 1815, the old royalist faction, in its moderated views, and when it renounced systematic and retrograding aspirations, had persuaded itself that, at least, the King's favour and the influence of the majority would give it power in the departments as at the seat of government. The decree of the 5th of September, 1816, abolished this double expectation. The old Royalists called upon the new electoral system to restore it, but at once perceived that the bill of the 5th of February was not calculated to produce such an effect; and forthwith commenced a violent attack, accusing the new plan of giving over all electoral power, and consequently all political influence, to the middle classes, to the exclusion of the great proprietors and the people.